The UAE healthy future study: a pilot for a prospective cohort study of 20,000 United Arab Emirates nationals

Abstract

BackgroundThe United Arab Emirates (UAE) is faced with a rapidly increasing burden of non-communicable diseases including obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The UAE Healthy Future study is a prospective cohort designed to identify associations between risk factors and these diseases amongst Emiratis. The study will enroll 20,000 UAE nationals aged ≥18 years. Environmental and genetic risk factors will be characterized and participants will be followed for future disease events. As this was the first time a prospective cohort study was being planned in the UAE, a pilot study was conducted in 2015 with the primary aim of establishing the feasibility of conducting the study. Other objectives were to evaluate the implementation of the main study protocols, and to build adequate capacity to conduct advanced clinical laboratory analyses.MethodsSeven hundred sixty nine UAE nationals aged ≥18 years were invited to participate voluntarily in the pilot study. Participants signed an informed consent, completed a detailed questionnaire, provided random blood, urine, and mouthwash samples and were assessed for a series of clinical measures. All specimens were transported to the New York University Abu Dhabi laboratories where samples were processed and analyzed for routine chemistry and hematology. Plasma, serum, and a small whole blood sample for DNA extraction were aliquoted and stored at −80 °C for future analyses.ResultsOverall, 517 Emirati men and women agreed to participate (68% response rate). Of the total participants, 495 (95.0%), 430 (82.2%), and 492 (94.4%), completed the questionnaire, physical measurements, and provided biological samples, respectively.ConclusionsThe pilot study demonstrated the feasibility of recruitment and completion of the study protocols for the first large-scale cohort study designed to identify emerging risk factors for the major non-communicable diseases in the region.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-017-5012-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Prevalence, attitudes, behaviours and policy evaluation of midwakh smoking among young people in the United Arab Emirates: Cross-sectional analysis of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey

“…Our daily midwakh users smoked slightly less frequently than adults who smoked daily (8.0 vs. 12.1 per day) [9], and more frequently than a smaller study of students in Dubai (6.4 per day) [20], although the wide measures of precision indicate the patterns of use vary quite substantially between, and possibly within, individual users. Other prevalence studies report similar findings with respect to midwakh use being higher among males [9, 14, 15, 17] and older teenage age groups [16], although in one large study among adults the average age of midwakh users was several years lower than other tobacco users [9]. To our knowledge only one prior study has explored attitudes towards midwakh, a small study of 96 adults of whom half smoked midwakh daily, and belief in being able to quit midwakh was much higher than our reported estimate among current users (73.2% vs. 42.3%) [10].…”

“…One national screening programme conducted between 2009 and 2010 reported that 1.7% of adults are daily midwakh user, [9] while another conducted in 2011 reported 12.0% of men used midwakh some days or everyday [13]. The baseline characteristics of one cohort study that used convenience sampling in 2015 reported that 13.0% of adults used midwakh currently [14]. The prevalence of midwakh, however, appears higher among students.…”

Types of tobacco consumption and the oral microbiome in the United Arab Emirates Healthy Future (UAEHFS) Pilot Study

“…Eligible Emirati nationals (aged 18 and above) completed a self-administered questionnaire including information on socio-demographic factors, lifestyle and medical history. Study participants completed physical and clinical exams, including measurements of anthropometry, body composition, and blood pressure 13 . During the physical exam, participants also provided blood, urine and mouthwash samples.…”

“…We tested for the first time the hypothesis that the oral microbiome is differentially impacted by specific tobacco products commonly used in Middle Eastern countries. We compared the effects of cigarette, dokha and shisha use on community composition of the oral microbiome by high-throughput sequencing of the bacterial 16S Ribosomal RNA ( 16S rRNA ) gene in 330 participants from the “UAE Healthy Future” (UAEHF) pilot study 13 .…”

Neuroinflammation: friend and foe for ischemic stroke

“…In 2014, a review by Mehndiratta et al reported that there is an increase in incidence of ischemic stroke subtypes in Asian countries, since Arab countries have identical epidemiological characteristics to other Asian countries, that would suggest an increase in ischemic stroke in Arab countries as well [7]. Moreover, reports from a population-based screening program indicate that there is a very high risk for cardiovascular disease, especially diabetes and obesity in the United Arab Emirates [8, 9]. These reports indicate that there will be a substantial increase in stroke burden, which results in substantial economic and societal costs [10].…”